All posts tagged Singapore

Singapore is reviewing guidelines governing the kind of short-term rentals used by home sharing companies like Airbnb, underscoring the regulatory uncertainties the fast-growing startup faces as it expands abroad.

At question in wealthy, tightly controlled Singapore: Should home owners be allowed to rent out their residences for short periods of time, as Airbnb users typically do?

It’s a legal gray area that the San Francisco-based company — one of the world’s hottest startups, valued at $10 billion — has faced in various markets as it has expanded throughout Europe and Asia. Read More »

Taxi booking services like Uber and GrabTaxi are set to receive some increased scrutiny in tightly controlled Singapore.

The city-state’s government said Friday that new regulations will require third-party taxi booking companies to use only licensed drivers and vehicles and specify fares up front. The rules also say such apps cannot force users to specify their destinations when booking, among other provisions. Read More »

Singapore’s main postal service is spending 182 million Singapore dollars ($145 million) on a new e-commerce logistics center in a bet that online retailing in Southeast Asia is set to boom.

The three-story, 553,000 square foot facility will be capable of handling 100,000 packages daily and should begin operations in the second half of 2016, Singapore Post, known as SingPost, said Tuesday in a statement. The center will be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, and will serve not just Singapore, but help customers deliver parcels throughout the region, according to SingPost. Read More »

Alibaba on Tuesday wrapped up its roadshow in Asia as it nears what could be the world’s largest initial public offering, with investors seeming to shrug off concerns about a higher valuation and focusing on the Chinese e-commerce firm’s growth prospects.

Founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma, along with other top executives at the Chinese e-commerce firm, met with about 150 investors behind closed doors at Singapore’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.

He did not speak with media, and hotel staff did not allow reporters to enter the luncheon event, which included prawns, spiced chicken, Portobello mushrooms and tiramisu, according to people who attended. Read More »

In the complaint, which was registered last month, a user reported receiving unsolicited telemarketing calls from abroad, a commission spokesman told The Wall Street Journal Friday.

“The commission is currently investigating the complaint,” the spokesman said, adding that he could not provide details about the user’s identity, specifics of the complaint, or any time frame for concluding the investigation. Read More »

RedMart, a Singapore-based online grocery-delivery service founded in 2011, has secured $23 million in funding from a group of investors including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Japanese billionaire brothers Taizo and Masayoshi Son.

The series B round included the company’s existing investors — Singapore resident Saverin and Garena, a Singapore-headquartered online games and social platform company — along with SoftBank Ventures Korea, an arm of Japanese telecommunications and Internet company SoftBank.

Softbank, led by Internet mogul Masayoshi Son, has been pursuing investments in Internet firms around the world, especially in Asia, where he hopes to solidify his empire. Read More »

Regulators here found that more than 1,500 online identification accounts used for accessing Singapore government services may have been tampered with, the latest cyber-security scare to hit this city-state.

Investigations by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore found that 1,560 SingPass accounts may have been “accessed without the users’ permission,” the regulator said in a statement Wednesday. Passwords for 419 of these accounts were reset, prompting notification letters to be sent to the account holders, the authority added.

“Based on IDA’s checks, there is no evidence to suggest that the SingPass system has been compromised,” the regulator said in its statement. “The passwords of all affected users have been reset and we are in the process of notifying them of this incident.” Read More »

Four veteran entrepreneurs on Thursday launched an $80 million venture capital fund to focus exclusively on startups in fast-growing, populous Southeast Asia. The fund, called Monk’s Hill Ventures, will have offices in Singapore — a Southeast Asia startup hub — and Jakarta, where it will aim to capitalize on the Indonesian market, home to some 240 million people.

The most prominent of the entrepreneurs is Singaporean Peng T. Ong, who co-founded and designed the pioneering dating site Match.com. Ong also started content management firm Interwoven, which he led to a successful initial public offering, and enterprise identity management firm Encentuate, which was acquired by IBM. Read More »

Singapore’s increasingly active startup scene has seen another acquisition.

Local startup Zopim, which provides live chat software, is being snapped up by San Francisco-based cloud services company Zendesk.

In an effort to create a startup hub for Southeast Asia, Singapore’s government has in recent years invested heavily in early-stage firms as part of the $16 billion Singapore dollars it has pledged for scientific research and development. Read More »